


Ad Libitum

by wintergrey



Series: Vade Mecum [13]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Love, M/M, PTSD, Reading
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:39:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3993811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Loosely, "according to what pleases" or "as you wish"; libitum comes from the past participle of libere, "to please". It typically indicates in music and theatrical scripts that the performer has the liberty to change or omit something. Ad lib is specifically often used when someone improvises or ignores limitations.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>A collection of drabbles and bits and pieces betwixt and between installations of <i>Vade Mecum</i>. Will be added to at leisure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is looking for things in books he's never going to find.

Dawn or something close to it; birds are singing but the world beyond the window is still soft and dark and grey. Sam isn't willing to accept that it's morning so he closes his eyes tight and turns toward the warm bulk of Steve's body. Steve shifts to accommodate him, Sam finds himself gathered up with his head on Steve's shoulder and Steve's arm tight around him.

"Go back to sleep." Steve kisses his hair. They're on the same page, that's great. Sam drapes his arm across Steve's taut belly and snuggles closer. A faint glow filtering through his closed eyelids suggests that Steve isn't sleeping himself, though. Reading.

"Whatcha reading?" Sam asks, or at least he comes close to making the right sounds.

"Reluctant Warrior."

"Again?" Sam cracks an eyelid and tries to focus enough to read Steve's face when he looks up. Steve practically has that book on rotation with over a dozen others. He reads a lot lately. Obsessively. In a couple days he'll be into the books on 'killology' if he keeps up his usual pace.

"I missed all this." Steve's expression is neutral with tiredness and concentration but Sam can hear the guilt in his voice.

"Baby." Sam, carefully and for the first time, takes the tablet away from him. Steve lets it go. "You think you're gonna find Bucky in there?" He means it half-teasing but then Steve swallows hard and Sam knows he's hit home, and harder than if he'd actually been trying.

Sam leans across Steve to put the tablet on the bedside table, fighting the tangled sheets to reach that far. He should've caught that earlier, needs to be careful with Steve, still. Probably always. Sure, Bucky's around. Doesn't mean Steve knows where he is or how to get to him. Doesn't mean Steve's okay--even if Bucky ever comes home.

"I'm fine," Steve says, as Sam finally wins the battle against the sheets.

"Don't lie to me." Sam kneels up, swinging a leg over so he has one knee on either side of Steve's hips. Harder for Steve to avoid looking at him this way. "Don't lie to both of us. You wanting it to be true doesn't make it true." In the grey dawn, Steve looks older, more haggard, than he does when the sunlight turns him golden and smooths away the lines of his cares.

"I just want to understand." Steve slides his hands up Sam's bare thighs, kneading gently. Being a little busy helps him talk and Sam isn't going to pass up the attention. "I should have been there, should have experienced those things. I could have...I never thought...I copped out, Sam."

"You sacrificed yourself to save thousands of lives and more and you 'copped out'?" Sam's not having any of that on his watch. "Steven Grant Rogers, look at me. At my face, as much as I know you love staring at my naked body. You can look at it later."

"I do." Steve looks at him as ordered, blue eyes so deep Sam could drown in them. "Like looking at you naked. A lot."

"Don't play me with flattery, boy." Sam catches Steve's hands in his before they wander any higher up his thighs. "Or that. Steve." He brings Steve's hands to his mouth to kiss them. There isn't any part of Steve he doesn't adore and the awareness of that makes his chest tight. "You didn't cop out. You know you didn't. Some things, even if you understand them, you can't fix them."

"I was asleep all that time, when he--when they--when they all were alive and suffering and dying." Steve shakes his head, then looks away to the lightening sky outside.

"I know, baby." Sam can't do a damn thing to take the hurt away, can't talk Steve out of the thoughts they both already know are bullshit but come creeping in anyway. No matter what you did, you always think you could have done more. Could have, should have, would have. "What would you say to me right now? C'mere. Trade places with me." He slides away to lie on his side of the bed where he beckons for Steve to follow him.

"You know what I'd say." Steve looms over him, kisses his mouth, takes Sam's hands just the way Sam held his. He's heavy and warm across Sam's thighs, a giant outlined in silver slowly turning gold.

"So tell me." Sam looks up at him, waiting for the light to come. "Tell me what you'd say if I was telling you that I didn't do enough, that I didn't suffer enough, that I copped out by surviving."

"We all just do what we can. We're only human, but I'm--" Steve looks away again until Sam tugs his hands. "I'm still human," he says, exhaling. "And I'm here. I did everything I could, we all do everything we can. Sometimes it's not enough. Most of the time it's not enough. That's why we don't do it alone."  
  
"And?" Sam kisses Steve's knuckles, marking the fading bruises from punching bags or walls hard enough to leave marks even on him. "Keep going."

"They wouldn't want me to blame myself. Bucky wouldn't want me to blame myself. I didn't blame them for going on without me, I just wanted them to live." Steve sits back on his heels, lets his head fall back, and exhales slowly. "The best thing I can do for anyone is keep living and keep getting better."

"There you go, baby." Sam lets Steve's hands go but it's only to reach up for him. "When Bucky comes home, he'll tell you all about it. In time. You don't need to keep reading if you don't want to."

"Will he?" Steve lets Sam draw him down, buries his face in the curve of Sam's throat.

"Promise." Sam holds him close. Bucky's not the only one who's lost. "Don't need a book to tell me that."


	2. Shelter from the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has a hard time with bad weather some nights. Steve's learned how to handle it.

  
Storms come in harder than Steve remembers. The pressure builds until his ears ache and he can taste the coming chaos when he's walking from the grocery store to the car. The wind lifts the dust from the asphalt so that the air glitters in the narrowing light and Steve is left with a fine layer of grit on his teeth. When the first huge drops hit the ground like cold bullets, it's almost a relief.

At home, Sam's quiet, bent over his desk as he reviews Tony's designs for a new wing pack. Steve isn't sure how he feels about that, about Sam going out again into the fray, but the time has to come. They're in this together. Sam doesn't say much even when Steve brings him dinner, sandwiches and a cup of coffee. Even living together, they live like bachelors.

Bad weather is hard on Sam some days, Steve doesn't forget it now. He knows what to watch out for and he finds it tonight. Lightning comes in sheets of white and purple, thunder crashes so hard the windows shake, and Sam's shoulders twitch under Steve's hands. Now he's on to reading his options for work in New York City. Steve isn't sure how he feels about that, either.

"Come on, baby." He kisses Sam's soft, dense hair. That's Sam's name for him but Steve borrows it sometimes. "It's late."

Steve knows how to deal when Sam won't sleep in bed, has a couple sheets and blankets and pillows thrown on the couch in front of the window instead. The curtains are open so they can see the storm, the windows are open to let in the wind and the smell of ozone and the spray of rain whipped hard enough to come in through the screen.

"Not bed," Steve promises, and Sam flicks off the desk lamp, takes his hand.

"You don't have to--" Sam starts to say, but Steve hushes him with a kiss.

In the dark living room, Steve undresses Sam slowly in front of the open windows. Someone could photograph them, it's always a risk, and some part of Steve wishes it would just happen. Stupid and selfish but he wants the world to see him with Sam in his arms and understand how much he loves his man.

Sam's skin is midnight streaked with neon when the lightning splashes over him. His eyes are dark wells that Steve wants to fill with laughter but, right now, there is the storm and all that goes with it. Dark nights, grounded flights, searches called off. Not everyone is found, not everyone finds shelter from the storm. Steve worries about Bucky less these days, knows he's fortunate, knows Bucky's smart as hell and knows how to come home when he's ready.

When Steve gets Sam naked, Sam pulls him down on the couch, pulls at his clothes until he's bare as well, both of them chilled and rain-spattered except for where they touch. They fuck--Steve's hands pinning Sam's to the arm of the couch, Sam's heels digging into his ass--while the storm rages. There's love in it but it's not lovemaking, it's distraction and struggle and ache until it's over.

After, when the storm subsides to merely rain and their skin is thick with sweat and sex, Sam no longer twitches when the distant thunder rolls. He lies with his back to Steve, breathing in time with him, both of them tied up in twisted sheets and silence. Sam finds one of Steve's hands with his and holds on. There's nothing to say that Sam doesn't already know: we'll look, we'll find him, it'll get better, I promise, I love you. Steve says the last one anyway, because there are not enough times he can say it, no matter how long he lives.

"I love you," he whispers in Sam's ear and Sam's breath catches a little.

"Love you, too." Sam brings Steve's hand up to kiss his palm, wet and open so that Steve shivers in spite of being sated. Sated isn't really a thing when it comes to Sam, there's always something more he could want. "How long you plan on putting up with this?"

"What part?" This. Sam, sleeping on the couch, not sleeping on the couch, fucking with the rain coming in, drinking coffee from a thermos that keeps rolling just out of reach so he doesn't have to leave Sam's bare body long enough to go to the kitchen, ironing shirts in the morning before Sam goes to work...Steve can't find any part of it he wants to stop.

"I don't know." Sam exhales slowly. "This part, I guess. The bad weather."

"Oh, that part." Steve kisses the satin curve of Sam's shoulder, bites and licks him there until Sam moans with pleasure. "Forever," he says against Sam's skin.

"That long?" Sam's laugh translates into a ripple of muscle against Steve's chest and belly. "You sure?"

"They come up with something longer than forever, let me know." Steve shifts a little so he can kiss up Sam's neck and over to his cheek. "Because I want that one instead."

"You keep saying that, I'm gonna think you mean it." Sam turns his head so Steve can kiss him on the mouth.

"I do. You know I do." Steve knows Sam's teasing but sometimes Sam can find lightness in things so much more easily than he can. Maybe that's why it's so easy for Steve to take Sam's dark nights to heart and ride them out with him. Sam's lightness, his laughter, is worth preserving at all costs.

"I do, baby." Sam's smile curves his mouth and creases the corners of his eyes enough that Steve can see it even at this angle when a faded streak of lightning crosses the sky. Steve snuggles Sam closer to him, tucks a blanket in around them over the tangled sheets.

"Practice saying that. You're going to need it some day."


End file.
